Assistant Coaches Are Like Accountants

Bud Grant is a unicorn.

After graduating high school in 1945, he enlisted in the Navy and was stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Station. There, he played football under two future Hall of Famers; head coach Paul Brown and assistant coach Weeb Ewbank.

After being discharged, Grant attended the University of Minnesota where he was a three-sport player, excelling at basketball, baseball, and football, where he was a second team All-American as an end.

After college, he was drafted by the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers and the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles.

He would end up playing in both competitions, winning an NBA championship with the Lakers before playing defensive end for a season (leading the team in sacks) and wide receiver for a season (leading the team in receptions) with the Eagles.

After the Eagles didn’t offer him an adequate contract renewal, he departed for the Canadian Football League, where he spearheaded the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, leading the Western Conference in receptions in three of his four seasons. (He also still holds the CFL record for interceptions in a playoff game, with five).

At the age of 29, Grant became head coach of the Blue Bombers, leading them to the Grey Cup six times in ten years, winning on four occasions.

He would then coach for eighteen seasons in the NFL with the Minnesota Vikings during their most famous era, winning eleven division titles and making four Super Bowl appearances.

Grant is enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, and has an NBA championship ring.

Incredible!

It makes Bud Grant’s autobiography one of the more captivating life stories of any of the coaches I’ve featured on this site.

Owing to his varied background, including starting his coaching career in Canada, Grant’s perspectives are noticeably different to many football-heads.

What stands out to me is the simplicity to which he keeps the game. He discusses coaching concepts far and wide, but can consistently draw back to the same core principles. I’ve captured them here in three quotes:

1. “The key to success and winning for any coach is to get the best players. Winning is dependent upon good players. And you will always be a better coach with better players, too. It’s just that simple.”
   

2. “A lot of coaches feel that they can outcoach or outthink other coaches. That just is not true. You really can’t outcoach someone else, but you can outpersonnel them by putting the right pieces together.”

3. “I have known coaches who have literally locked themselves in their offices and worked all night. I don’t know what they did in there, but it obviously wore them thin. And even with all of that preparation, when it finally came time for them to make the final decisions on things, they often had trouble.”

Coaching is immensely difficult, but it can be remarkably simple.

1. Your players

2. Your coaches

3. Your decisions

With his unique path, Grant has unique perspectives on all three areas. However, for this post, I want to focus on how he liked to build his coaching staffs.

Grant says he had no shortage of friends and former teammates who wanted to come and coach with him in Minnesota, but he wanted to prioritize winning football games instead of having a good time. “I was humble enough to acknowledge that I knew some things about football, but not everything,” he admits, which is why he purposely set out to find other coaches who could expand his access to knowledge and information.

“Assistant football coaches are very much like accountants,” Grant writes. “There are lots of them and they are very good at what they do, but they are not paid to make decisions or judgment calls. Instead, they are paid to provide information. They have got to provide the information to the head coach, who in turn makes the ultimate decision.”

This ‘information slant’ was how Grant went about hiring his assistants. Most of his hires were referrals from his network. Grant made a habit of seeking out his network of football people, both in the US and Canada, to ask: “Who is the coach who knows the most about X”.

He kept Jimmy Carr (one of most innovative defensive minds ever) upon a recommendation.

He found Jerry Burns (his long-time offensive coordinator) through his network.

He found Marc Trestman (the eventual Chicago Bears head coach) through his network.

He hired defensive backs coach Pete Carroll (who’d recently been fired by the Buffalo Bills) on a recommendation from Lou Holtz.

“I was able to get a very good variety of people who had good track records and who met the criteria that I felt was important for our success,” Grant writes. “My coaches were smart, good at player evaluations, and understood that organizing and managing people are the keys to success.”

Obviously, hiring is now more complex than it was in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But it remains that assembling a staff is one of the most underrated and under-utilized accelerators of team performance.

The key insight isn’t to use Bud Grant’s approach to hiring, it’s to have an approach to hiring.

But despite the added complexity of the modern workforce, your approach shouldn’t be passive. You shouldn’t be waiting to ‘see who is available’ or ‘hope XYZ person applies to the job ad on LinkedIn’. Too many organizations have become passive, rather than seeking out staff as diligently and methodically as they do players.

Do you have a deliberate, pro-active approach to hiring and assembling your staff?